Science and Belief

I have just read, in the July 2009 edition of Scientific American, an article by Dr. Michael Shermer PhD.

In the article, entitled, I Want To Believe, Dr. Shermer describes the importance of the null hypothesis to scientific exploration; the notion that, in general, scientific claims are regarded as untrue until and unless they can be verified by means of controlled experiments validated by statistical analysis. However, he goes on to describe a class of such claims which, by their nature, cannot be tested in that way but instead rely for verification on "nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion" Cosmology and archeology are given as examples of this type of study.

Later on in the article, Dr. Shermer refers to a question, the answer to which can probably not be ascertained by either approach, the question of what came before the Big Bang. In other words, what brought the universe into existence? He mentions the idea that the universe which we inhabit might have been proceeded by a multiverse which spawned daughter universes one of which was the one we inhabit but that there is no positive evidence for this conjecture. He then adds an intriguing comment to the effect that nor is there any positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question of the origin of the universe; that it was created by God.

I refer to this as intriguing because that remark would seem to compare the possibility of there having been a physical precursor to our universe with the possibility of there having been a metaphysical one, a case, to my mind, of comparing apples with elephants. The implied comparison is invalid.

I raise this matter because Dr. Shermer, who elsewhere describes himself as a skeptic, says that he has concluded that he is a skeptic "not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know." That seems to me to be both an honest and an honorable position. However, to speak about knowledge in respect to God is surely a misuse of the word. Theoretically at least, everything about the physical laws governing the universe is discoverable. However, we should not delude ourselves that any comparable process could uncover any knowledge about God.

I neither know that God exists nor do I know that God does not exist but I am sure that knowledge is not the issue in this context.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and the author of Why We Believe.

Why Pray

A friend of mine, a theologian who spent his working life in India, was greatly impressed by the vivacity and diversity of religious life in the sub-continent. He studied the sacred works of all the major religions present there and found, once the trappings of ceremony and the gaudy accretions of popular belief were put to one side, a remarkable congruity of core belief.

The first five words of the Nicene Creed are; I believe in one God. When I was a small boy I somehow gained the impression that only Christians believed this but Jewish school fellows soon disabused me of that notion and later on I realised that what I had thought of as an exclusive club actually had three members because Muslims also believed in a single, all powerful deity.

Still, I thought, a club with only three members is not too bad and we three can still look down with pity upon those poor benighted souls whose belief systems include pantheons of gods and goddesses whose behaviour, as exemplified by that of the denizens of old Olympus, is often less than edifying.

But later on in life I looked into the several books written by my theological friend and saw there that the characters who provide the external appearance of polytheistic religions are merely aspects of a much deeper reality in which there is only one supreme Absolute. Jolted by this into further reading , I soon realised that the notion of a Supreme Creator is a common characteristic of almost all organised religions as well as of many individuals who profess a faith in God. Another common characteristic of those who believe in the existence of a Creator is a notion that it is desirable and possible to communicate with that being, hence the notion of prayer.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, asking God for something; relief from sickness, success in business, a happy death, a bountiful crop and so on is probably the most common form of prayer while the next most frequently used type is the praise prayer .

As a child I was urged by my spiritual mentors to pray; to tell God what I was thinking, to offer praises to God, to tell Him that I was sorry for having offended Him and to ask Him for things; mercy principally but also alleviation from sickness and pain for me and for others, always remembering though that God might not do as I asked because, in the long run, He knew what was best for me and for everyone else.

In my own case, when no relief came from my chronic asthma, for instance, I was adjured to 'offer my pain up to God as a sacrifice.' Naturally, as an aspirant son of Holy Mother Church I complied but by my tenth year I had begun to wonder whether it wasn't a bit odd; talking to someone who never answered, not even enigmatically. I'd read about the Oracle at Delphi by this time and thought that even a cryptic answer would have been better than nothing.

Now, as a young person, I could see the point of supplicatory prayers; I wanted something and thought that He might give it to me but praising seemed somehow unedifying. After all, God knew all about Himself and hardly needed me to remind him that he was great, good, loving etc. In any event, as I have argued elsewhere in this blog, God is beyond the ultimate event horizon and is consequently unknowable and the attributes that we ascribe to God are a reflection of our wishes rather than of His reality.

In the Don Camillo stories by Giovanni Guareschi, the eponymous priest talks directly to God via the figure of Christ on the cross over the altar of the parish church. And God, in the figure of Christ, not only replies but initiates conversations, particularly when He wants to make a point to the saintly but worldly Don Camillo. Their talk is natural and easy, Don Camillo does not bow and scrape although he does show a proper respect and reverence for his Lord. I have often wanted to be able to talk with God in that way, especially when I have been very worried about something, a seriously ill child, for instance but to no avail; God has never had anything to say to me. I have no way of knowing whether anyone else has ever received a conversational answer from God but I'd lay very long odds on its never having happened.

I am now in something of a bind. I am sure that praise of God is an absurd activity and pretty sure that petitions to God are never answered. And yet and yet, I have never been able to quite rid myself of the notion that my nowadays conversational asides to the God whom I cannot affect might, in some unknowable, celestial sense of the word, be being heard.
Whistling in the dark, perhaps?

What I know and what I believe

Know
Middle English, from Old English cnāwan; akin to Old High German bichnāan to recognize,
Latin gnoscere, noscere to come to know, Greek gignōskein
Date: before 12th century

Transitive verb:

• To perceive directly, have direct cognition of.
• To have understanding of.
• To recognize the nature of.
• To recognize as being the same as something previously known.
• To be acquainted or familiar with.
• To have experience of.
• To be aware of the truth or factuality of.
• To be convinced or certain of.
• To have a practical understanding of.

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary



Believe
Middle English beleven, from Old English belēfan, akin to Old High German gilouben to believe
Date: before 12th century

Intransitive verb

• To have a firm religious faith
• To accept as true, genuine, or real
• To have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something
• To hold an opinion
• To consider to be true or honest
• To accept the word or evidence of
• To hold as an opinion

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary



A few of the things I know

How to use trigonometry to measure the height of a mountain.
That an organism denied nutriments and fluids will perish
That light from the Sun takes approximately 8.2 minutes to travel from the outer edge of the solar photosphere to the surface of the Earth.
That if, while swimming, I allow my lungs to fill with water, I will drown, unless I quickly eject the water.

We gain this type of knowledge either from textbooks or from experience but these examples and millions more like them have another characteristic; they are capable of independent verification by experiment.

Information about the universe may be divided into two broad categories, facts and theories. Facts have been verified by experiments that can be repeated. Theories remain just theories until and unless they are either verified or refuted by experiment. In principle, everything about the universe is discoverable by this method, although some theories may be doomed to remain unproven or unrefuted because experiments to test them are either prohibitively expensive or have apparently insurmountable technical difficulties attached to them. However, the material point is that every physical attribute of the universe, from the physics of the smallest sub-division of an atom to those of the largest aggregation of galaxies, is, in principle, discoverable by experiment.


A few of the things I believe

That the Baltimore Orioles baseball team will win the 2010 World Series, this in spite of the fact that the O’s haven’t won that competition since 1983.
That the next general election in Britain will be won by the incumbent administration, the Labour Party.
That the British monarchy will be abolished within twenty years, in other words no later than 2028
That there may be a God in whose ‘mind’ all that is resides.

It is obvious from these few examples that there is more than one kind of belief. Some, the first three of those listed, might be called reasonable expectations which will, with the passage of time, be seen to have been either right on target or seriously wide of it.

But the forth item is in a category containing only one example. Neither reason nor knowledge informs it. Belief in the existence of God is, in the strict sense of the word, irrational. Not that every philosopher has been content to leave it there. Anselm of Canterbury, Renee Descartes and others have striven to prove that God exists by means of long and complicated ontological arguments with, in some cases, elements of the Unmoved Mover argument attached. Aristotle , who may have invented that argument relied on it entirely in his attempt to prove the unprovable.

For my part, I believe that God may exist because I cannot honestly say that God does not exist but beyond that I cannot go. The God who may exist is as unknowable as the physics that produced the singularity from which the universe was born explosively. We have not the eyes to see beyond either horizon.

But I am sure of a few things about the God who may exist:
He has no attributes
He is neither in time nor space
He is unknowable

In the next chapter, I will demonstrate the truth of these assertions.

Chapter 2

Attribute
Middle English, from Latin attributus, past participle of attribuere to attribute, from ad + tribuere to bestow
Date: 14th century

Noun

• An inherent characteristic
• An accidental quality
• An object closely associated with or belonging to a specific person, thing, or office
• A word ascribing a quality to a person thing or object

Time
Middle English, from Old English tīma; akin to Old Norse tīmi time, Old English tīd
Date:
Before 12th century


Noun

• The measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues
• The non-spatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future

Space
Middle English, from Anglo-French espace, space, from Latin spatium area, room, interval of space or time
Date: 14th century

Noun

• A period of time; also: its duration
• A limited extent in one, two, or three dimensions: distance, area and volume.
• An extent set apart or available
• The distance from other people or things that a person needs in order to remain comfortable
• A boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction

Unknowable
Date: 14th century

Adjective

• Not knowable; especially: lying beyond the limits of human experience or understanding

All three definitions from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary


What are God's attributes?

Faced with this challenge, a Hindu might first ensure that the questioner was not referring to Shiva, Vishnu or Shakti or any member of the Hindu pantheon because they are are thought of as simply manifestations of Ultimate Reality, a concept about which nothing can be said. Hence the need for something more nearly human through which one might direct one's devotional feelings.

Faced with the same question, a Muslim might say that although God has revealed his will through the prophets, his nature remains unknowable, adding that when we speak, for example, about God being all-knowing and all-merciful, we are simply referring to what we believe has been revealed to us and not to anything actually known.

A Jew might reply that God cannot be divided into parts located in time or space and that therefore the notion that he has attributes is merely an imperfect attempt to understand the nature of the infinite. He or she might add that scriptural references to the Hand of God or to God's anger and so on are simply figures of speech used to make God's apparent actions comprehensible.

A Christian might also say that God is essentially unknowable, and that, therefore, any reference to attributes in respect of God must be seen as allegorical.

In stating what I understand to be the position of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus on this subject, I am, I believe reflecting the views of historical and contemporary scholars from each faith rather than those of the many adherents of these religions who hold and express other, less aesthetic views.

And it is that spirit that I ask the following two questions: when did God create the Universe and where did God create it?

When?
Current theories about the origin of the Universe put its age as between 13.5 and 14 billion years but when did its Creator act to create it?

The word, 'When' refers to time but as reported above, time is "the measured or measurable period during which an action or process or condition exists or continues" and "the non-spatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from the past through the present to the future."

Where?
The word, 'Where,' refers to a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction."

The verb to create, is thus seen to betoken an action performed in time and space but God exists outside of time or space. It follows that God did not create the Universe, it simply is in God.

Conclusion
We exist temporally and our existence is bounded by birth and death, God exists eternally and there are no boundaries to God's existence. Anything we say about God is an attempt to humanise God for our own purposes but has nothing to do with God. God is truly truly unknowable and beyond the limits of human experience or understanding.